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Wednesday, September 10, 2014

I
often get the question “how do you decide what you’re going to write
about?” it’s a pretty valid question, unlike someone who writes fiction I
don’t have to come up with a story or a plot I just have to come up
with a subject, but what subject? As a health and wellness expert my
choices are endless, exercise, stress reduction, weight loss, nutrition
and all the sub categories that go along with healthy living. But how do
you decide what to spend your valuable time and energy writing when we
all know that some books will sell and some won’t. How to chose a topic
that people will want to buy and will be something I want to delve
deeply into. I’ve written 7 books (and counting) and I’ve chosen
subjects based on key word searches, surveys, market research and a coin
flip. But sometimes a topic just chooses you.

A
few years ago while working at a high end California spa, I was
sitting at my desk in my office reading a popular men’s magazine (I was
on my break– I swear) when I came across an article that said new
research proved that sitting for extended periods of time increased your
risk of getting diseases like diabetes, heart disease obesity and
certain forms of cancer and that doing 30-60 minutes of exercise a day wasn’t enough to counteract the damage that sitting did. The
article even claimed that as far as negative health effects were
concerned, sitting was just as bad as smoking! To top it off it stated
that people who sat more during the day were heavier than people who
moved around and spent more time standing during the day regardless of how much they exercised.

I remember sitting there feeling like I had just been kicked in the crotch by Chuck Liddell. This is not what
they had taught me in my six years of college. It’s not in the
literature they give you for your personal trainer certification and no one was
talking about this at fitness conferences. This had to be complete and
utter bull s#!t. So I did some research myself and what I found shocked
me, and the deeper I dug the more I began to think this new discovery
might just have merit.

The
first thing I did was go back through my records. As a trainer you
always have clients that trouble you. They work hard in their sessions,
say their doing all the things you tell them to do on their own, insist
they are sticking to their diet program, but never can get to the goal
weight loss they set or they can’t seem to get their blood work numbers
were they need to be. I always chalked it up to the “they think they are
but there not syndrome”. Many people fool themselves into thinking they
are doing things that they aren’t actually doing, you’ve seen it. The
person who says they eat healthy but over the course of the day eats 20
mini Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups from the office candy dish and then
scarf down half a quart of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey Ice Cream
while watching Game Of Thrones just before bed. But maybe I was wrong,
maybe they had been doing everything I had been telling them to do but
what I was telling them to do just wasn’t enough. Low and behold when I
checked all of my trouble clients had jobs like accountant, lawyer,
software designer and author all jobs that had them sitting all day
long.

I
called a couple of the researchers that had been quoted in the article
and came away with the distinct feeling that this was big. I mean
the-sky-is-falling big. This was when I decided I HAD to write the book.
I pulled together all the research I could find, I talked to all the
major players in the field. I collected opinions on how best to
counteract the deadly effects of prolonged sitting, then created
movements that could be done anywhere (even in the office) so people
could discover new ways to be healthy. For me the hardest part was
figuring out how to make all these facts and medical research
interesting enough to actually read. The bottom line is I was on fire! I
needed to spread the word and get these simple, effective tools into
people’s hands. That’s how my book, “Is Your Chair Killing You? A
Healthier You in 8 Minutes a Day” was born. No market research, no key
word searches and no coin flips. It also happens to be my bestselling
book so far. Things that make you go hmmmmm.

Sitting
for extended periods of time is as bad for your health as smoking
cigarettes. And exercising for 30-60 minutes a day isn’t enough to undo
the damage from extended periods of sitting. Is Your Chair Killing You
reveals shocking new research showing that sitting for long periods
greatly increases your risk of developing obesity, heart disease,
diabetes, stroke and cancer. Our bodies were designed to move constantly
over the course of the day, but most of us sit for hours a day at work
and at home! Fitness and wellness expert and award-winning author Kent
Burden has created brief, simple movements you can incorporate into your
daily life to combat the damaging effects of sitting. These simple
movements, done standing for 1-5 minutes each hour will burn calories,
energize and refresh you, and you won’t even break a sweat; you’ll even
improve your back pain. This book is a how-to for weight loss and
disease prevention. Read this book–you’ll be healthier in as little as 8
minutes a day.

Nominated for the Dan Poynter Global Ebook Awards and won honorable mention at the Los Angeles Book Festival